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THE VALUE OF HUMANISTIC, PARTICULARLY 
CLASSICAL, STUDIES AS A PREPARATION 
FOR THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY, FROM 
THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE PROFESSION 



A SYMPOSIUM 

From the Proceedings of the Classical Conference held at Ann Arbor, Michigan 

April I, igo8 



Reprint from the School Review, June, October, November, 1908 






CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I. The Place of Latin and Greek in the Prepara- 
tion FOR the Ministry 3 

William Douglas Mackenzie, President of Hartford 
Theological Seminary 

11. The Value to the Clergyman of Training in 
THE Classics .16 

Rev. a. J. Nock, St. Joseph's Church, Detroit 

III. Short Cuts to the Ministry^ with Especial Ref- 

erence TO THE Elimination of Latin and Greek 
FROM Theological Education 23 

Hugh Black, Union Theological Seminary, New York 

IV. Greek in the High School, and the Question of 

THE Supply of Candidates for the Ministry . 28 

Francis W. Kelsey, University of Michigan 

V. Concluding Remarks . . . . • • -47 

President James B. Angell, Chairman, University of 
Michigan 



\Arwui) ci 3 \ ua- tX^ , 



A SYMPOSIUM 

ON THE VALUE OF HUMANISTIC^ PARTICULARLY CLASSICAL^ 
STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY, 
FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE PROFESSION ^ 



THE PLACE OF LATIN AND GREEK IN THE PREPARATION 
FOR THE MINISTRY 



WILLIAM DOUGLAS MACKENZIE, D.D., LL.D., 
President of Hartford Theological Seminary 



I count it a matter of great importance that this Conference 
has been invited to discuss the question how the study of Greek 
and Latin is related to preparation for the Christian ministry. 
It is true that indeed the classical department in our schools and 
colleges deeply affects the whole character and level, the tone 
and quality of the general education of our people; for it is still 
held by a very large number of men whose opinion we cannot 
afford to ignore, that ultimately the best culture of any modern 
nation must rest upon the basis of Greek and Latin history 

^ Through the kind assistance of the Board of Regents of the University of 
Michigan and the courtesy of the publishers of the School Review, it has been 
possible to secure some reprints of this symposium for distribution. Those 
desiring a copy may address (inclosing a two-cent stamp for postage) Mr. Louis 
P. JocELYN, Secretary Michigan Schoolmaster's Club, South Division St., 
Ann Arbor, Mich, The symposium upon "The Value of Humanistic, particularly 
Classical Studies as a Preparation for the Study of Medicine and Engineering," 
at the Conference of 1906, was published in the School Review, Vol. XIV (1906), 
pp. 389-414; and that upon "The Value of Humanistic Studies as a Preparation for 
the Study of Law," at the Conference of 1907, in the same journal. Vol. XV 
(1907), pp. 409-35. The symposium of 1906 was translated into German by 
Professor Von Arnim, of the University of Vienna, and was published, with an 
interesting introduction by Dr. S. Frankfurter, under the title "Der Wert des 
Humanismus, insbesondere der klassischen Studien als Vorbereitung fiir das 
Studium der Medizin und der Ingenieurkunde vom Standpunkt der Berufe" 
(4. Heft, Mitteilungen des Vereins der Freunde des humanistischen Gymnasiums, 
Vienna and Leipzig, 1907). 

At the Qassical Conference of 1909 there will be a symposium on "The 
Value of the Study of Latin and Greek as a Training for Men of Affairs." 



4 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

and literature. Apart from that wide topic, it must be confessed 
that the study of these things has a direct relation to the leading 
professions which is of the utmost importance to the dignity and 
power of those professions. But, above all, as we shall see, the 
relation of Greek and Latin to the Christian ministry is so inti- 
mate and so organic that it is no exaggeration to assert that the 
way in which it is measured and handled by the colleges and 
seminaries will practically settle the future intellectual influence 
of the Christian pulpit. 

It is scarcely possible, then, to discuss our subject without 
asking ourselves, first of all, what is the function of the ministry? 
There are those who maintain that it is possible to carry on the 
ministry of the gospel without a classical training, and in proof 
of this position it is possible to name many persons who have 
occupied and occupy prominent positions as Christian preachers, 
and who have brought many souls into the Christian experience, 
who are entirely innocent of Latin and Greek. It must be 
admitted quite frankly that for the specific work of evangelism 
such a training cannot be proved to be essential. We must also 
recognize that many very useful pastorates have been carried on 
by men without that kind and level of education. But we must 
be all the more careful, when these facts have been admitted, to 
realize what relation the ministry sustains to the life of the 
church as a whole, and, through that, to the general life and 
culture of the entire nation. For religion is no mere secluded 
section of human life. It arises and it lives, it fights its battles 
and wins or loses them in close contact and struggle with all the 
other forces and institutions of a civilized life. It does not con- 
tinue its existence and influence by mere spontaneity. It requires 
and demands the exercise of the highest functions of human 
nature, of imagination as well as faith, of the disciplined mind 
as well as the purified heart. As truly as it demands the secret 
agonies of repentance, it demands also the outward glories of 
public worship and the concrete burdens of human service. 
Religion never will come to its own unless it leads all the other 
interests and forces of civilized man. It is all or nothing, it is 
supreme or least among the complex conditions of human experi- 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 5 

ence. It carries in its life and heart absolute authority, or its 
voice is a mockery and its claims a superstition. 

The Christian religion maintains its life through the con- 
tinual assertion of its nature as the supreme self -revelation of 
God, and as carrying in itself a supreme authority over the con- 
science and the will of all human beings. It seeks — by its very 
nature it must die or seek — to make its spirit effective in the midst 
of all human interests. It must meet every strain which is brought 
to bear upon its fundamental claims. This the Christian religion 
cannot do in the face of the modern world except through men 
who are trained for a task sublime as this task. Whoever these 
are, they must stand to the community as the chief representatives 
of the Christian faith, its spokesmen, its advocates, its intelligent 
teachers, its confident promulgators. They must be men who are 
able to face the deepest things which Christianity may fear, and 
the deepest things which Christianity may do, among the way- 
ward minds and the wayworn hearts of men. Moreover, such 
men as these must stand in every community. For it is not at a 
distance, by mere printing of elaborate arguments and dealing 
with scholarly situations that this supremacy of the Christian 
gospel is to be maintained. This work can only be done through 
the lives of men in contact with the lives of men. This religion 
cannot be content with mere formal acquiescence, with mere out- 
ward conformity to its routine practices. It must seek by its 
very nature to penetrate every section of the country with all its 
influence, that it may bring every individual to all his perfection. 
And in every section of a civilized land the same battle must be 
engaged in as in every other section. The educated are every- 
where, the disputers of this world are in every hamlet and side 
street of all this vast country. There is no place where it is safe 
to say that Christianity can be successfully maintained unless it 
is fully represented by those who know its nature and manifest 
its power both in their word and in their life. 

If these things are true, then they may be summed up in the 
blunt statement that the Christian religion cannot possibly retain 
moral and social leadership if its ministers lack an intellectual 
equipment which is equal to that required by any calling in the 



THE SCHOOL REVIEW 



most highly civiHzed regions of the world. The idea that Chris- 
tianity can conquer by means of men who do not know what 
mental discipline is, who hope to maintain their influence by a 
piety that is divorced from intelligence, or a message that is 
delivered by intellectual incompetents, is one of the most disas- 
trous which any generation could inherit or cherish. The minis- 
try must have its schools in which work must be as severe as in 
any other professional school in the land. The pulpits must be 
occupied by men who have given themselves to specific and 
technical preparation with as deep self-sacrifice, with as real 
diligence, as those who hope to occupy the front places in medi- 
cine or in law or in education. 

It is in the light of this whole view of the ministry and of its 
preparation that I must approach the specific task which your 
committee has assigned to me. What place, then, shall the study 
of Greek and Latin occupy in the preparation for the ministry ? 

First as to Greek. The Christian religion not merely arose 
out of the Hebrew religion (and therefore every theological 
student ought to wish to know a little Hebrew), but in a world 
whose intellectual life was deeply saturated with the influences of 
the Greek language and literature. Greek, in fact, was the lingua 
franca of the world at that time, and hence we find that the writ- 
ings of the New Testament are all preserved to us in that lan- 
guage. Traditions that one or more originally existed in Aramaic 
are probably true, but the originals are entirely lost, so necessary 
was it that if they were to gain permanent place and influence 
they should be promptly translated and circulated as Greek docu- 
ments. Even those apostolic letters which were addressed to the 
church in Rome itself and to that other church in the Roman 
colony of Philippi were in the Greek language. It is further to 
be noted that early Christian literature emanating from the city 
of Rome was not in Latin, but in Greek — as witness the Epistle 
of the Roman Clement. It has on apparently good grounds been 
concluded that down to the latter half of the second century the 
language used in the life and worship of the Christian church 
at Rome was not Latin, but Greek. 

Many problems have always been felt to exist regarding the 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 7 

kind of Greek which we find in the New Testament literature. It 
is not until very recent days that material has been found for an 
approximate answer to that question; but it is becoming clearer 
every year, through a closer study of inscriptions and from writ- 
ings disentombed in Egypt, that the Greek which is used in this 
New Testament is not merely Attic Greek modified or degraded, 
but is the vernacular Greek of that period. The first preachers 
of the gospel of Christ, by the divine instinct which has lived ever 
since in the church, especially in its great periods of missionary 
activity, addressed themselves directly to the people in the lan- 
guage which the people knew and used. The clearing-up of some 
of these facts has added new zest to the scholarly investigation of 
this aspect of the Greek language, and may throw new light upon 
various aspects of New Testament study. 

In all this the older apologists used to see the work of a 
divine providence. In the fulness of time, it was said, God 
sent his Son into the world, and that fulness, that fitness of all 
the circumstances, included this fashioning and perfecting of a 
language better adapted to record and express the Christian 
facts and truths than any other which the world had known. If 
many of us cannot today, with the same conscientious confidence, 
insist upon that argument as a piece of apologetics, we can yet 
recognize the actual and living importance for the Christian 
religion of the fact that, through its origin and permanent con- 
nection with the Greek language, it was brought into a living 
connection with the whole marvelous literature of the Greeks. 
It is one of the most significant of all facts that when this religion 
began to take its place in the larger life of the Graeco-Roman 
world, and when its theologians were compelled to face the 
fundamental intellectual problems which it presented, then, as at 
the present day, they found in that most highly developed philo- 
sophical language of antiquity keen weapons ready to their hand. 

It follows from all these facts that the thorough investiga- 
tion of the New Testament in its history and meanings must for- 
ever rest on a knowledge of the Greek language. He who knows 
it not is shut off from a personal consideration of the deepest 
problems concerning the origins of the faith which he professes. 



8 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

To turn now to the Latin language, we must observe that 
toward the end of the second century, in Northern Africa there 
arose that fierce Christian spirit, TertulHan of Carthage. He it 
was who really began the history of Latin Christian literature, 
and in his rugged paragraphs and sometimes tumultuous vocabu- 
lary we seem to feel the burden of the task laid upon the 
beginners of that history. It is no easy thing to adapt a language 
to a view of human nature and its eternal relations, which is so 
vast, so subtle, so complex as the Christian view. It requires 
time, even as the missionaries of today discover, to refashion the 
great words of any language that they may move, as it were, at 
home in the universe which is opened by the Christian faith for 
the human spirit. From that time forth, Latin gradually and 
rapidly became the official language of the church, and the great 
theologies came to be written in that tongue. As the Roman 
Empire, now with the church at its heart, spread over Europe, 
it carried, for all the purposes of church and of state, the Latin 
language with it. It is true that in Southern Europe — nay, even 
in Italy itself — ^the real Latin disappeared and was replaced by 
the various vernacular tongues, which, in their turn and at a much 
later period, had to be reconquered for the purposes both of 
literature and of religion. But down to the time of the Reforma- 
tion, Latin continued to be the prevailing language in the higher 
life of all civilized peoples in Europe. In that tongue they wrote 
their science and their philosophy, they carried on the amenities 
and the burdens of diplomacy and government, they recorded 
their biographies and histories. In that tongue they taught all 
the peoples to say their prayers and to build their theologies. 
This language it was which became the instrument for the keen 
dialectics of scholasticism and much of the deep-souled music 
of mysticism. 

When the Renaissance arose, there was a rediscovery of the 
ancient literature of Greece, and over Europe it spread its flowers 
and its song, breaking in upon the monotony of the heavier 
tongue of the Latins with its lissome grace, its keen discrimina- 
tions, and its close-knit vigor. But the Renaissance was accom- 
panied by the Reformation. The Reformation brought about a 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 9 

Still greater change in the uses of language, for the effort was 
made to give the Scriptures to the peoples of Europe in their own 
tongues — the language of the home and the street and the market- 
place. In spite of this strenuous missionary effort, which, of 
course, began soon to produce its appointed results in the great 
literatures of those modern tongues, the discussions of the theo- 
logians continued to be conducted in the Latin language. Hence 
it is that so large a part of the theology of the Reformation 
period is inaccessible to those who are unable to use this lan- 
guage, while many of the most important aspects of ecclesiastical 
as of secular history in all the Christian centuries lie beyond 
their reach. 

In view of all these facts, it seems almost needless to assert 
that no one can move easily in the region of theological dis- 
cussion nor read very far into the history of the Christian church 
to whom the simplest Latin is utterly unknown. I know that 
there are those who feel persuaded that, through translations of 
the Scriptures and through reading of modern theological books, 
they can obtain all that is necessary for the conduct of their 
ministry. That depends entirely upon what their ideal is. There 
are deep and curious psychological results produced by ignorance 
as well as knowledge, and many paltry and viewless paths are 
trod because a man has to avoid certain topics and cannot enter 
upon certain courses of reading which he would naturally have 
entered upon if he had possessed even a little better equipment. 
The tendency, as I believe, of those who do not possess these 
weapons of a full Christian culture must ever be to read what is 
easier, to avoid those greater works which confront one on so 
many of their pages with words printed in Greek or with quota- 
tions from Latin, with references to phases of history which only 
they are likely to know who have studied Greek and Greek 
history, Latin and the history of Rome. Thus, as I believe, the 
lack of Greek and Latin does of itself tend to lower the general 
authority of that portion of the ministry which is without them. 
Many a question the young college men in their churches could 
ask which must bring the blush to their faces because they know 
not these two things. Many an address must be made which 



lO THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

shall be poorer because they cannot speak with confidence on 
points which a very little Latin or Greek would enable them to 
determine with somewhat of authority. 

I am aware of the possible argument that we cannot expect 
the average minister to be a thorough classical scholar. And I 
admit at once that the average ability may not be high enough 
for such excellence, the average diligence may be unequal to its 
maintenance, and the average tasks may interfere much with 
its constant cultivation. But, on the other hand, I may urge 
a view of the matter which I think affords basis for a complete 
answer to that difficulty. It is ever idle to discuss a concrete 
situation in terms of an impossible ideal, and I wish today above 
all to be practical. 

If anyone will look calmly and without prejudice over the 
field of work which is being carried on by those churches in this 
or other lands which insist that every minister shall have learned 
some Greek and Latin, he will find that as a result there are 
various grades of attainment in these languages and that each 
of these has its real value and function. First, there are those 
whose acquaintance with and taste for classical learning is such 
that they are fitted to become specialists in this region. For them 
it is possible to do original work in the investigation of sources, 
in the discussion of minute linguistic problems, in the discrimi- 
nation of one Greek usage from another, in the power to date 
a Latin document by the quality of the Latin. The church needs 
this kind of work for its large and varied life, and hence it must 
continue to call upon the preparatory schools and colleges to pre- 
pare such men for its service. I fear that we in this country 
hardly realize how much opportunity there is in this direction, 
and how great a leeway American scholarship needs to make up. 
One is glad to be able to say that in recent years much work of 
the best kind has been done at some American institutions by 
our younger scholars in this field. It is a mistake to suppose 
that there is no fresh ground to break either in biblical study or 
in the general field of church history. The discovery of ancient 
manuscripts of all kinds, the closer co-ordination of various fields 
of investigation, in economics as well as politics, in the minutiae 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY II 

of literary scrutiny as well as in the measuring of large move- 
ments of thought, is adding fresh light to our • understanding 
both of the institutional history of the church and of the signifi- 
cance of its great doctrinal discussions. Much of this work can 
only be done by those who are trained philologists and who 
bring to the investigation of history the expert linguist's tastes 
as well as the grasp of the philosopher and the insight of the 
religious man. 

In the second place, we must, however, remember that there 
is a place for that much larger number of men whose tastes are 
somewhat different, who are able and glad to acquire a reading 
knowledge of the classical languages without concentrating 
attention upon the grammarian's interests. Here there is a wide 
range of possibility — from the man who reads any Latin and 
Greek with ease, and prefers to do all his work in the original, 
down to the man who reads them faithfully but with difficulty, 
who, therefore, depends largely upon translations, but who, when 
he comes to critical decisions, is careful always to compare 
the translations with the original. There are great varieties of 
power between these two extremes, and a very large amount of 
the best work in several theological departments, biblical, histori- 
cal, and theological, is today being done by those who have this 
equipment in some one of its varying degrees. And one must 
recognize that this is necessary, for there are various departments 
of theological investigation which require the use of quite other 
languages, which take men into the study of other periods than 
those covered by Greek and Latin writings. In cases like these, 
expert use of the classical tongues is not easily maintained. They 
grow rusty, translate laboriously, and feel that they are losing 
time if they depend merely upon their own slow progress through 
the pages of their authors. For such men the use of translations 
is not only allowable but necessary, and some of the most impor- 
tant books in many fields have come from such scholars. I 
believe that a far larger number of our ministers ought to belong 
to some grade in this class. If they have had the foundations 
well laid in school and college, if they have been inspired in the 
seminary to cultivate the use of Latin and Greek in preparation 



12 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

for their classroom work, if they have formed a habit of fre- 
quently reading even a little in those languages, of never depend- 
ing merely upon translations but, where possible, of exercising 
themselves in direct and personal translation and, at important 
points, checking the best translators by comparison with the origi- 
nal, they will not only maintain through life a reasonable knowl- 
edge of the classical tongues but will thereby be able to go to the 
fountain-heads of philosophical and theological history for them- 
selves. They need not merely depend upon interpretations and 
reports of other scholars, but may have that noble joy of com- 
paring these directly and personally with those ancient writers 
who are under discussion. 

But there is a third class, consisting of those who have never 
gained a power of reading the classics easily; but who, being 
faithful and diligent men, gained their degree in both languages. 
They realize the great advantage of the measure of knowledge 
they have won. They rejoice that quotations from Latin, and 
Greek references to classical literature and history, are not all 
"blind" to them. Such men will rejoice to have on their shelves 
the best modern commentaries on both the Old and the New 
Testaments. They will ever keep up the study of the New Testa- 
ment by the use of commentaries which treat the Greek text. 
They will rejoice to get as close to the originals as they can, and 
will be stimulated to buy books that deal directly with the 
sources. This measure of scholarship and ideal of practice is 
within the easy reach of practically every minister in the land. 
It is by no means to be despised. It is a measure of power which 
sets a man far beyond all his brethren who, however naturally 
able or pious, are without the knowledge which he possesses of 
these languages. The least in the kingdom of God is greater than 
all those without, and he who is able to use Greek and Latin in 
the degree I have described occupies always, in discussion, and in 
the consultation of books, and in the judgment of controversies, 
a position such as even abler men cannot hold, whose minds are 
dead to these languages. I cannot strongly enough insist upon 
this point because, while it is the lowest part of the ideal I am 
setting before you, it is one which brings within every minister's 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 13 

reach whole ranges of theological work which otherwise he 
would never think of reading. It is safe to say that there is 
hardly one, for instance, of the excellent series of International 
Commentaries which does not imply some knowledge of Greek 
and Latin. Even translated commentaries on the New Testa- 
ment, like that of Meyer, imply the power to turn the pages of 
the Greek Testament. No man can fruitfully read the transla- 
tion of Harnack's History of Dogma who does not know these 
languages. He cannot follow the discussions on the authorship 
of the New Testament books, the history of New Testament 
times, without feeling at every step his deficiencies if he is unable 
to refer to the quotations or to follow even sparse references to 
Greek and Latin words. The tendency for such a man must 
always be to purchase and read books which belong to the more 
ephemeral class — those which are avowedly popular, whether in 
exposition or in theological discussion. His mind moves, there- 
fore, always on smooth waters, and goes surely and easily to 
sleep. His imagination is unenkindled by the rugged struggle 
with big problems. His faith is unbraced by conscious facing of 
the strongest winds of criticism. A large number of weaklings 
in the pulpit are men who might have become strong and vigor- 
ous in their intellectual and spiritual life, if their equipment had 
been sufficient to make them appreciate the important works, to 
buy one first-class commentary rather than three or four common- 
place productions of respectable piety. Men like these are the vic- 
tims of every wind of doctrine that blows in any direction. Some 
of them take refuge in the arid regions of narrowness, of a con- 
servatism that is bitter because uninstructed. Or else they yield 
themselves to the flatulent food of the latest fad, if only the 
writer of a book or a series of books is possessed of a smooth 
style and great self-confidence, if only he uses the word "new" 
for his philosophy or his psychology or his theology, if only he 
insists often enough and subtly enough that he who does not 
see these things does not see anything at all. What we need 
today in our ministry is a great body of men who know enough 
of the past to understand the real problems of the present. And 
we cannot have such a body of men unless they are willing to 



14 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

make the sacrifices of toil and patient study to acquire those 
languages which will open the most important discussions of the 
past and the present to their eyes. 

I feel, of course, with you all, not only that this ideal is neces- 
sary, but that it is difficult to attain. I have heard, not so long 
ago, of ministers, in conversation with theological students, who 
sneered at the amount of attention which was demanded by their 
teachers to the languages of Scripture and Christian history, 
saying that they had been in the ministry for so many years and 
had not found these things at all necessary. The down-drag of 
a low ideal, when it exists throughout a vast body of men, is a 
very powerful force and one which it is extremely difficult to 
counteract. It will take long to spread through the churches 
of America — nay, even throughout the ministry of America — 
the ideals of ministerial scholarship which I have so briefly and 
slightly sketched above. For the better day that is coming we 
must depend very largely upon the spirit which emanates from 
the classical teachers in our schools and colleges, and the methods 
which are employed in our theological seminaries. I believe that 
one of the greatest forces which can be employed by teachers in 
public schools to induce boys to begin the study of classics and to 
carry it on enthusiastically, is continually, freshly, interestingly, to 
argue and to prove and to illustrate the position that the study 
of classics is necessary, not merely for a noble general culture, 
but for definite and professional power in the great careers of 
life. Among these careers not only statesmanship and law and 
medicine and education, but the ministry of the church of Christ 
must be named. It ought not to be hard for any teacher of Latin 
or Greek in any high school in the country to get sufficient grasp 
of the relation of his language to these professions to enable him 
thus to influence his scholars, to make them feel that these are 
not dead but ever-living languages, not useless lumber but the 
living fountain of fresh inspirations, and that no nation can, in 
its culture, in its statesmanship, in its professional careers, stand 
in the front rank which does not, through these languages, relate 
itself to the greatest achievements of the past. 

What is said here of the school must apply all the more 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 15 

powerfully to the college. I believe that the sources of supply 
for the ministry can be opened by the spirit of the college profes- 
sors of America. It is absolutely certain that in college many men 
lose an earlier desire to enter the ministry, and this through the 
mere fact that the ministry as an ideal form of human service 
and as an obligation of the higher life does not seem to have the 
respect of their teachers. I think that colleges and universities 
where the truly broad spirit reigns may, without any loss of self- 
respect, without any taint of sectarian spirit, so arrange its 
courses, so make suggestions to those who are looking forward 
to the ministry, as to encourage such men to undertake fields of 
study that will fit them for their future work in the seminary and 
in the church. By this I do not mean that any seminary work 
should be done at college. Attempts to do it have, as a rule, 
proved a failure. And in any case the man who looks forward to 
the ministry ought to take the broadest and strongest college 
course which is possible. But undoubtedly there are departments 
of study which those looking forward to the ministry ought to 
pursue, when we take the broad view of the ministry which I have 
suggested today. I believe that Latin and Greek ought to be 
studied by such men through the whole four years of their col- 
lege course, so that, having had eight years in these languages, 
they can go to the seminary able to use them with some degree 
of comfort, and able to appreciate their value as soon as they 
enter upon biblical study and the investigations of church history. 
And in the seminary these languages ought to be used. No year 
should pass in which the men are not encouraged to read in the 
Greek Testament and the Greek Fathers, as well as in Latin 
theology. Thus eleven years of work ought to send the average 
man out into the ministry of America with an equipment which 
shall give him a position in every community he enters, as a man 
of sound education, of real and thorough preparation for his 
great career. 

I trust that, as a teacher of theology, I am not deaf to the 
clamant voices which appeal to us for men who are trained to 
meet a living situation and to deal with the often crushing bur- 
dens of our modern world. It is in the very name of those 



l6 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

voices, with their pathos in my heart, that I yearn for a ministry 
in our land which stands high enough to measure, and is strong 
enough to grapple with their task. Ultimately *a nation is made 
by its ideals, and social wrongs are permanently corrected, not by 
superficial rearrangement of outer things, but by deep regenera- 
tions of spirit and desire. What we need is the leadership of 
men upon whom the Christian view of God and the world has 
shed its light. It is no child's play, it is no idler's listless and 
perfunctory work, it is a trained man's life-work to make that 
Christian view and the experience which lies behind it prevail in 
his own character that it may prevail over the character of his 
flock and over the history of a nation. The minister of the 
Christian religion is, alike by the nature of that religion and the 
nature of his own relation to it, committed to the position of 
leadership in the community. Woe to the man who undertakes 
it with mind untrained and will unbraced for a life of intellec- 
tual and spiritual labor! But blessed is the nation and secure is 
its future whose ministry is composed of men who, to the zeal 
of the evangelist, and the sacrifice of the pulpit, and the practical 
wisdom of the leader, add the wisdom and the sacrifice and the 
zeal of the trained teacher. Today the church of Christ needs 
men possessed of all these gifts and acquirements, possessed even 
of that culture "to make reason and the will of God prevail" 
amid the free and tumultuous life of our modern world. 



II. THE VALUE TO THE CLERGYMAN OF TRAINING IN THE 

CLASSICS 



REV. A. J. NOCK 
St. Joseph's Church, Detroit 



The other night, in company with an eminent expert in social 
problems, I had the privilege of hearing Mr. Post lecture on the 
witch's work that the railroads are making with our political 
institutions. As we left the building, the first unmistakable 
breath of spring in the air brought with it a sudden, disquieting 
flood of recollections of my home in the Virginia mountains, and 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 1 7 

there occurred to me at once the pensive and graceful Hnes from 
Virgil's Georgics: "O for the fields, and the streams of Sper- 
cheios, and the hills animated by the romping of the Lacaenian 
girls, the hills of Taygetus!" The social practitioner, who 
regards my favorite pursuits with an eye of gentle toleration — 
thinking them a harmless means of keeping inefficient and senti- 
mental persons from meddling underfoot of those like himself 
who are bearing the burden and heat of the day — took my arm 
and said, "I suppose now, your way out of all these troubles with 
the railroads would be to put Mr. Harriman and Mr. Pierpont 
Morgan to reading Virgil's Georgics." I had considerable satis- 
faction in telling him that he was not much more than half wrong. 
The reply was not dictated solely by my own prepossessions. 
The function of the Christian minister is to recommend religion 
as the principal means of making the will of God prevail in all 
the relations of human society. He promotes the practice of the 
discipline of Jesus as the highest mode of spiritual exercise look- 
ing toward human perfection. But religion is an inward motion, 
a distinct form of purely spiritual activity; not an intellectual 
process, an external behavior, or a series of formal observances. 
The final truth of religion is poetic truth, not scientific truth; in 
fact, with sheer scientific truth religion has very little vital con- 
cern. The Christian minister, then, has his chief interest in 
recommending a special mode of spiritual activity, in interpret- 
ing a special mode of poetic truth. But his experience bears 
witness that the general must precede the special. Before one 
may hope to do much with a special mode of spiritual activity 
like religion, at least some notion of spiritual activity in general 
must have made its way. Before one may hope to do much with 
a special mode of poetic truth like the truth of religion, at least 
some sense of the validity and worth of poetic truth in general 
must be set up. Here it may be seen how distinctly progress in 
religion is related to progress in culture — I do not say progress 
in education, for the recent changes in educational aims and ideals 
make of education a very different thing from culture ; the recent 
revolution in educational processes compels us to differentiate 
these very sharply from the works and ways of culture. Educa- 



l8 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

tion, at present, is chiefly a process of acquiring and using instru- 
mental knowledge. Its highest concern is with scientific truth, 
and its ends are the ends of scientific truth. Culture, on the other 
hand, is chiefly a process of acquiring and using formative knowl- 
edge; and while culture is, of course, concerned with scientific 
truth, its highest concern is with poetic truth. Culture prizes 
scientific truth, it respects instrumental knowledge; it seeks to 
promote these, where necessary, as indispensable and appointed 
means to a great end ; but culture resolutely puts aside every temp- 
tation to rest upon these as ends in themselves. Culture looks 
steadily onward from instrumental knowledge to formative 
knowledge, from scientific truth to poetic truth. The end of 
culture is the establishment of right views of life and right 
demands on life, or in a word, civilisation, by which we mean 
the humane life, lived to the highest power by as many persons 
as possible. 

Because material well-being is the indispensable basis of civi- 
lization, the more thoughtless among us are apt to use the word 
civilization only in a very restricted and artificial sense. Our 
newspapers especially appear to think that the quality of civiliza- 
tion is determined by being very rich, having plenty of physical 
luxuries, comforts, and conveniences, doing a very great volume 
of business, maintaining ample facilities for education, and hav- 
ing everyone able to read and write. The civilization of a com- 
munity, however, is determined by no such things as these, but 
rather by the power and volume of the humane life existing there 
— ^the humane life, having its roots struck deep in material well- 
being, indeed, but proceeding as largely and as faithfully as 
possible under the guidance of poetic truth, and increasingly 
characterized by profound and disinterested spiritual activity. 
Thus it is possible for a community to enjoy ample well-being, 
and yet precisely the right criticism upon its pretensions to be 
that it is really not half civilized — that not half its people are 
leading a kind of life that in any reason or conscience can be 
called humane. Let us imagine, say, a community whose educa- 
tional institutions deal in nothing but instrumental knowledge 
and recognize no truth that is not scientific truth; with all its 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 19 

people able to read and write indeed, yet with a very small pro- 
portion of what they read worth reading and of what they write 
worth writing; with its social life heavily overspread with the \ 
blight of hardness and hideousness; with those who have had 
most experience of the beneficence of material well-being display- 
ing no mark of quickened spiritual activity, but rather every- 
where the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual 
dulness, enervation, and vulgarity; to apply the term civilization 
to anything as alien to the humane life, as remote from the ideal 
of human perfection, as this, seems to us unnatural and shock- 
ing. In such a community, no doubt, all manner of philanthropic 
and humanitarian enterprise may abound ; what we nowadays call 
social Christianity, practical Christianity, may abound there. We 
do not underestimate these ; their value is great, their rewards are 
great ; but the assumption so regularly made, that these in them- 
selves are sufficient indication of a chaste and vigorous spiritual 
activity on the part of those who originate and promote them is, 
in the view of culture, manifestly unsound. There is much room 
just now, we believe, for a searching exposition of Article XIII, 
"Of Good Works Done before Justification." We of the minis- 
try, therefore, must keep insisting that as our concern is purely 
with the processes and activities of the spirit, only so far forth 
as these things represent the fruit of the spirit can we give them 
our interest. 

The Christian minister, then, is interested in civilization, in 
the humane life; because the special form of spiritual activity 
which he recommends is related to the humane life much as the 
humane life is related to material well-being. He is interested 
in the humane life for himself, because he must live this life if 
he hopes to prepossess others in its favor. And here comes in 
the ground of our plea that Greek and Latin literature may be 
restored and popularized. One makes progress in the humane 
life by the only way that one can make progress in anything — by 
attending to it, by thinking about it, by having continually before 
one the most notable models of the humane life. And of these 
available models, we find so large a proportion furnished to us in 
the literature of Greece and Rome as to force upon us the con- 



20 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

viction that in our efforts to exemplify and promote the humane 
Hfe we simply cannot do without this literature. The friends of 
education as it now is keep insisting that citizens should be trained 
to be useful men of their time, men who do things, men who can 
develop our natural and commercial resources, carry our material 
well-being on to a yet higher degree of abundance and security, 
and play a winning game at politics. For these purposes, they 
tell us, instrumental knowledge and scientific truth are the only 
things worth knowing. We content ourselves with remarking 
simply, It may be so; but with all this we, at any rate, can do 
nothing. The worst of such justifications is that, like Mr. 
Roosevelt's specious and fantastic plea for the strenuous life, 
they are addressed to a public that needs them least. There is 
small danger that interest in anything making for material well- 
being, for the development of our commerce and industrial 
pursuits, will fail for a long time to come. As for politics, states- 
men trained on instrumental knowledge may well be instrumental 
statesmen, such as ours are ; and these, too, appear to be for ever 
and ever. Our interest is in knowing whether education as it 
now is will give us citizens who can accomplish anything worth 
talking about in the practice of the humane life. The friends of 
education tell us that men trained as they would and do train 
them will turn out shrewd, resourceful business men, competent 
investigators, analysts, and reporters in the professions, clever, 
practical men in public life. Again we reply. It may be so; but 
will they turn out business men of the type, say, of Mr. Stedman, 
professional men of the type of Dr. Weir Mitchell (if we may 
venture to bring forward these gentlemen by name), public men 
and politicians of the type of Mr. Hay or Governor Long? When 
these questions are satisfactorily answered, we will cheerfully 
reconsider what we say in behalf of Greek and Latin literature ; 
but unless and until they are so answered, we must continue to 
point out as in our view the cardinal defect in education, that it 
does next to nothing for the humane life, next to nothing for 
poetic truth, next to nothing for spiritual activity ; and its failure 
in these directions being what it is, that our civilization is retarded 
and vulgarized to correspond. 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 2i 

For the sake of civilization, therefore, we of the ministry- 
venture our plea in behalf of culture. We beg that some of the 
stress now laid upon purely instrumental knowledge be relieved. 
How can we even be understood when, for the sake of the great 
end of our calling, we praise and recommend culture and all the 
elements and processes that enter into culture, if the whole bent of 
secular training is against these, and serves but to confirm the 
current belief that the only real knowledge is instrumental knowl- 
edge, the only real truth is scientific truth, the only real life is a 
life far short of what life might be and what it ought to be? 
We ask that Greek and Latin literature be restored. We do not 
pretend to argue for the disciplinary worth of Greek and Latin 
studies, their value as a memory-exercise, as furnishing a corpus 
vile for our practice in analysis, or as a basis for the acquisition 
of modern languages. We argue solely for their moral value ; we 
ask that they be restored, understood, and taught as an indispen- 
sable and powerful factor in the work of humanizing society. As 
these subjects are now taught (if an unprofessional opinion may 
be offered without offense) their grammatical, philological, and 
textual interests predominate. Mr. Weir Smyth's excellent 
anthology, for instance, is probably an example of the very best 
textbook writing of its kind, and a glance at this — comparing it, 
if one likes, with the editorial work of Professor Tyrrell, in the 
same series — shows at once that Mr. Weir Smyth's purposes, 
admirable as they are, are not our purposes. We would be the 
very last to disparage Mr. Weir Smyth's labors or to fail in 
unfeigned praise of the brilliant, accurate, and painstaking 
scholarship which he brings to bear on all matters that he sees 
fit to include within the scope of his work. But sat patriae 
Priamoque datum; again we say it is not likely that instrumental 
knowledge, even in our dealings with the classics, will ever be 
neglected. Let us now have these subjects presented to us in 
such a way as to keep their literary and historical interests con- 
sistently foremost. Let the study of Greek and Latin literature 
be recommended to us as Mr. Arnold, for example, recommends 
it; let the Greek and Latin authors be introduced to us as Mr. 
Mackail introduces them ; let them be edited for us as Professor 



22 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

Tyrrell edits them ; let them be interpreted to us as Professor Jebb 
or Professor Jowett interprets them. Or, if the current super- 
stition demands that we continue to receive the Greek and Latin 
authors at the hands of the Germans, or at second-hand from the 
Germans, we make no objection; we stipulate only that our edi- 
torial work be done for us not by the German philologists, textual 
critics, grammarians, or by American students trained in their 
schools, but by Germans of the type of Lessing, Herder, and 
Goethe — men who are themselves docile under the guidance of 
poetic truth, who are themselves eminent in the understanding 
and practice of the humane life ; men, therefore, who can happily 
interpret this truth and freely communicate this life to us. 

The consideration of Greek and Latin studies in view of the 
active pastorate usually, we believe, takes shape in the question 
whether or not it is worth while for a minister to be able to read 
the New Testament and the Fathers in the original. Into this 
controversy we have never seen our way to enter; nor have we 
been able to attach to it the importance that it probably deserves. 
What interests us in Greek and Latin studies is the unique and 
profitable part these play in the promotion of the humane life. 
Nor do we argue with the friends of education as to the possi- 
bility of generating and serving the humane life by means of the 
discipline of science; we affirm simply that the humane life is 
most largely generated and most efficiently served by keeping 
before one the models of those in whom the humane life most 
abounds; and that of these models, the best and largest part is 
presented to us in the literature of Greece and Rome. The men 
in undergraduate work with us, back in the times of ignorance 
before natural science had come fully into its own, knew little 
of the wonders of the new chemistry. Little enough did they 
know of such principles of botany, physics, geology, astronomy, 
zoology, and so on, as one of our children in the high school will 
now pretend to rattle you off without notice. But they knew their 
Homer, their Plato, their Sophocles, by heart; they knew what 
these great spirits asked of life, they knew their views of life. And 
with that knowledge there also insensibly grew the conviction 
that their own views and askings had best conform, as Aristotle 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 23 

finely says, "to the determination of the judicious." This was the 
best, perhaps the only, fruit of their training; they became 
steadied, less superficial, capricious, and fantastic. Living more 
and more under the empire of reality, they saw things as they 
are, and experienced a profound and enthusiastic inward motion 
toward the humane life, the life for which the idea is once and 
forever the fact. This life is the material upon which religion 
may have its finished work. Chateaubriand gives Joubert the 
highest praise that can be bestowed upon a human character, 
when, speaking of Joubert's death as defeating his purpose of 
making a visit to Rome, he says, "It pleased God, however, to 
open to M. Joubert a heavenly Rome, better fitted still to his 
Platonist and Christian soul.'" It is in behalf of the humane 
life, therefore, that we of the active pastorate place our present 
valuation upon the literature of Greece and Rome: for the first 
step in Christianity is the humanization of life, and the finished 
product of Christianity is but the humane life irradiated and 
transfigured by the practice of the discipline of Jesus. 



III. SHORT CUTS TO THE MINISTRY, WITH ESPECIAL REFER- 
ENCE TO THE ELIMINATION OF LATIN AND GREEK FROM 
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION 



HUGH BLACK 
Union Theological Seminary, New York 



I am not responsible for the title given me, and I suppose we 
are all agreed that there is no royal road to learning, no short 
cuts to anything worth having. I imagine that the title was 
chosen in condemnation of any attempts to lower the standard 
for entrance into any profession. All responsible for education 
have at least ideals which would impose an irreducible minimum 
and would seek to stiffen requirements as soon as it became prac- 
ticable. The denial of short cuts is perhaps not a very palatable 
doctrine to a generation that wants quick results, and, in any case, 
it is natural to assume that something less than the long and 
stately preparation once demanded for the old-time ministry 



24 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

could be made to do for the practical needs of our day. In some 
quarters, also, the shortage in the candidates is met by cutting 
down the ancient scholastic standards and by shortening the time 
required for study. It is the object of this convention to protest 
against this and to show cause why such a policy must fail of 
its purpose. 

It ought to be said that it is not by the will of the churches 
that short cuts should have become necessary or possible. A 
completely educated ministry has always been the ideal of the 
churches of Protestantism. One only needs to know something 
of the history of education in America to know that this is so. 
All the older schools of learning had their origin in this ideal. 
Every college was started for the express purpose of supplying 
educated men for the ministry. So when we make a definite 
pronouncement against the short cuts which would eliminate 
subjects we think indispensable, we ought in justice to remember 
that often the church is compelled to do what it can and not what 
it would. Circumstances are often too strong for us, and some- 
times a situation arises in the church when it must use what 
material it has. In a country like this, where a great tract gets 
filled up in a few years, the church seeks to follow the movement 
of population and must do the best it can under the circumstances. 
It has to cover the ground, and, if need be, do without some of 
its own scholastic requirements. Then, there are different kinds 
of work needed in different situations, and it is fair to keep in 
mind the distinction between the qualities needed for a regular 
and long pastorate of the usual type and the qualities needed for 
what may be called the work of an evangelist. Indiscriminate 
condemnation of churches and seminaries that have to some 
extent departed from the old rigid standard is foolish. From 
what I know of some seminaries in America I am convinced 
that nowhere, certainly not in Great Britain, is there such a 
thorough and scientific training insisted on. In no seminary in 
the English-speaking world is there such equipment and such 
high class of scholarly and practical work done as in Union 
Theological Seminary — to mention the one I naturally know 
most about. But again, I say, we must consider the facts which 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 25 

make this standard impossible throughout the whole country. 
For instance, I have now in mind a seminary, which takes men 
otherwise qualified who have had no college training. Personally 
I am at one with you in thinking it a matter of regret that this 
should be necessar}'-, but it is necessary, and in that seminary they 
are doing according to their opportunities magnificent work for 
the outlying parts of a great state which otherwise would not be 
supplied with men at all. They take the best men they can get, 
and give the best training they can provide, a training, I may 
mention, which includes Greek. 

But the subject given me suggests a different and more 
difficult question than this one of practical means. It is the 
heresy that the old subjects thought at one time necessary for 
the best education have no longer their place of pre-eminence. 
It is frankly held by some that the time could be better spent than 
on the old classical subjects. It is held that even for the training 
of divinity students Greek is no longer needed, that modern views 
of the Bible have altered the relative value of subjects, and that 
the New Testament has been well enough translated to give all 
that a minister needs even for preaching about it. Scientific 
subjects, political economy, sociology, are of more practical use 
for the up-to-date minister than the old discipline. It was to 
be expected that this view should be taken, since it is in line with 
a change in the whole world of learning generally. Professor 
Kelsey said that in this matter of the value of Greek we must 
educate the people. That would perhaps not be so hard as the 
other task in which we must educate the educators. We must fight 
out this question and settle it among ourselves as to the contents 
of a scheme of education designed for certain classes. We give 
up the old claim which called nothing education which was not 
built on the classics, but we are in danger of being swamped and 
denied even a place for the older discipline. 

We suffer from a false democracy in learning which seems 
to hold that one subject is as good as another, and so we find 
an elective system run riot. I believe in an elective system 
and I believe that the general American ideal of a university 
is a great and magnificent one, but I do think that this ideal 



26 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

ought to be separated from an Academic course where the 
authorities settle, out of their wisdom and the wisdom of the 
ages, what is the best general training along certain lines. A 
university ought to be hospitable and should, if it have the means, 
be willing to teach any subject ; and from this wide point of view 
it is true that one subject is as good as another. What is wrong 
is that this theory, which has its right place in a university with 
its varied professional schools, has been brought down to the 
ordinary college course, and even to some extent down to the 
high school. There is a sense in which it is unspeakably false 
to say that one subject is as good as another, if by that we mean 
that for the purposes of education and general culture of the 
mind any sort of instrument will do as well as another. A 
university, for example, puts Spanish on the same level as Greek 
for entrance and for graduation; but anybody who knows any- 
thing knows that for discipline of mind alone, to say nothing 
of the literatures, the two languages are not on the same level. 
We ought to decide on relative values in education. Human 
nature being what it is, we cannot expect the ordinary student 
to choose Greek when Spanish would be so much easier to him, 
and when the whole current is against him. 

The same thing is true about other things of equal impor- 
tance in the ministerial education. The colleges send graduates to 
the seminaries who have never studied philosophy in the old sense 
of the word and who have never had Greek. They are supposed 
to have had their equivalents. In the philosophical department 
they have had psychology and sociology, and other courses to 
make up the required amount: and all this is of course on the 
principle that one subject is as good as another. It is perfect 
nonsense to say that these subjects, again for purposes of educa- 
tion, are of equal value with philosophy, which is the history of 
thought itself. It is to miss the strategic points; for just as a 
man trained in Latin and Greek will learn French and Spanish 
in half the time, so the student of philosophy is already half way 
to know all about the newer "ologies" sometimes substituted in 
its place. The colleges should look toward the professional 
needs of students, and the authorities should have their minds 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 27 

made up as to what in the general experience of the world is the 
accredited discipline, say, for a student who means to go on 
to the study of theology. I do not see why a boy who goes to a 
university with the intention of being a minister should not be 
taken in hand by advisory authorities who would wisely counsel 
him as to the things he ought to study; and even the boy who 
has not his mind made up as to his future course should have his 
course so far prescribed that the recognized subjects for the 
finest culture cannot be omitted. I do not want the colleges and 
universities to do seminary work, but it ought not to be left to 
the seminaries afterward to do what is really college work. 

Complaint has often been made about the short pastorates 
that are so common today in the ministry. There are many 
reasons, but one is that the intellectual demands are greater than 
ever before, and men find it difficult to last out. We are perhaps 
justified in assuming that a profounder training in these founda- 
tion subjects would enable a man to wear longer. An early train- 
ing which included Latin and Greek would give some mastery 
not to be attained by the varied browsing of more modern 
methods. We would not have so many fads in religion if men 
knew more of the history of thought. I do not need to go back 
over the argument covered by President Mackenzie to prove that 
a minister cannot know his own subject if he is ignorant of the 
classical languages. Apart from the absurdity of a man dealing 
in any profound way with a book whose language he is igno- 
rant of, it ought to be remembered that practically all learned 
commentaries are unreadable to the man who does not know 
Hebrew and Greek. It does not mean that we want to make men 
all specialists in these languages, but it is not so hard to get a 
working knowledge which enables one to get the good out of 
the work of other scholars. 

I find great discouragement among teachers of the classical 
languages in the universities, and some of them have given as 
their judgment that in twenty or thirty years there will be little 
Latin and hardly any Greek at all taught in our universities. They 
say that the utilitarian subjects so called are sweeping these out 
ruthlessly. I might believe this if I did not believe that in the 



28 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

long run it can be demonstrated that for the highest education the 
languages and literature and history of Greece and Rome are 
supremely utilitarian, and that nothing can take their place. In 
any case there will always be many to whom utilitarianism of the 
gross type is not the final test of anything, and these are the men 
who sooner or later become the leaders of men. I am optimistic 
about this as about many other things. It is a great matter that 
a symposium like this should be held of men who are convinced 
because they know. We discover in education as in other things 
the swing of the pendulum, and it is even now swinging back 
to a more reasonable position. Certainly in the question of the 
value of Latin and Greek for the ministry that is acknowledged, 
and whatever place is given to other methods of training for 
special work, Latin and Greek will remain as a necessary part 
of the equipment of the theological scholar. 



IV. GREEK IN THE HIGH SCHOOL, AND THE QUESTION OF 
THE SUPPLY OF CANDIDATES FOR THE MINISTRY 



FRANCIS W. KELSEY 
University of Michigan 



In 1870, according to the reports of the commissioner of 
education, there were enrolled in the theological schools of the 
United States 3,254 students. Ten years later, the number had 
risen to 5,242, an increase of more than 60 per cent. In 1890 
the enrolment was 7,013, an increase for the preceding decade 
of about 34 per cent. In the twenty years from 1870 to 1890, 
then, the increase in the number of students of theology far 
outstripped the increase in the population of the country; for 
in the decade preceding 1880 the population increased only 30.1 
per cent., while in the following decade the percentage of increase 
of population was even less, or 24.85 per cent. 

A reaction was to be expected. Under normal conditions, in 
the case of any occupation which enrols members at a rate greater 
than the rate of increase of the population it is only a question of 
time when society will fail to furnish means of support for the 
larger numbers and a readjustment will follow. The enrolment 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 29 

of Students in schools of theology continued to increase until the 
year 1897-98, when it reached the maximum of 8,371, the 
increase in eight years being nearly 20 per cent., still exceeding 
the rate of increase of the population. After 1898 the number 
declined until 190 1-2, when it had shrunk to 7,343- ^^ that 
year there were actually fewer students in attendance at theo- 
logical seminaries than there had been ten years previously, in 
1891-92. 

Since 1902 there has been an increase, small the first two 
years, then larger. In 1904-5 the enrolment in theological 
schools was 7,580, and in 1905-6, 7,968, a gain of 388 students 
in a single year, the number of men enrolled being greater by 
305 than in the previous year. In contrasting these statistics 
with those of earlier years it must not be forgotten that at the 
present time there is a considerable number of women in schools 
of theology; the enrolment of women reported for 1905-6 was 
252. Statistics later than 1906 are not available. 

At the time when the last general census was taken, in 1900, 
the decline in the number of candidates for the ministry had not 
yet made itself numerically apparent in the profession. In 1870 
there were in the United States 43,874 clergymen; in 1880, 
64,698; in 1890, 88,203; and in 1900, 111,638. In the three 
decades the number of clergymen had increased more rapidly 
than the population. In the decade from 1870 to 1880, while the 
population of the country increased 30.1 per cent., the number 
of clergymen increased 47.46 per cent. In the next ten years 
the population increased 24.85 per cent., the number of clergy- 
men 36.33 per cent. ; finally in the decade ending in 1900 the 
number of clergymen increased 26.56 per cent., while the 
increase of population was only 20.68 per cent. But again we 
must notice that of the 111,638 clergymen enumerated in the 
census of 1900 3,373, or 3 per cent., were women, of whom 
probably only a small minority were occupying pulpits. In 1870 
there was a clergyman to every 878 persons — men, women, and 
children — in the United States; in 1880, one to every 775; in 
1890, one to every 714, and in 1900 (women included), one to 
every 681. 



30 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

In judging of the significance of these figures, account should 
be taken of differences in race; for negro clergymen in the 
decade preceding 1900 increased more rapidly in number than 
white. In the supplementary analysis of the Twelfth Census ^ 
the statistics covering this point are summarized as follows (p. 

234): 

The number of negro clergymen in continental United States in 1900 was 
15,528, as compared with 12,159 in 1890, the increase being 3,369, or 27.7 per 
cent. White clergymen increased somewhat less rapidly, from 75,972 in 1890 
to 94,437 in 1900, or 24.3 per cent. With both races the number of clergymen 
increased more rapidly than the population. In the South the number of 
non-Caucasian clergymen rose from 10,159 in 1890 to 12,841 in 1900, the 
increase being 2,682, or 26.4 per cent. The increase in white clergymen was 
from 17,688 in 1890, to 21,387 in 1900, or 20.9 per cent. Of the total clergymen 
in the south in 1890, 36.5 per cent, were non-Caucasian, and in 1900, 37.5, a 
gain of I. Clergymen of all races increased somewhat more rapidly in the 
North and West than in the South. In continental United States the num- 
ber of clergymen of each race to each 100,000 persons of the same race was : 

Negro, Indian, and Mongolian clergymen, 160 in 1890, 171 in 1900. 

White clergymen, 138 in 1890, 141 in 1900. 

That the statistics showing this steady increase in the number 
of clergymen should not coincide with the statistics indicating 
increase and decrease in enrolment of ministerial candidates in 
theological schools is not strange. It would be some years before 
even a marked decline in the number of students of theology 
would perceptibly lessen the number of clergymen in the country. 
But there are other reasons which are in part manifestly phases 
of the operation of the law of supply and demand, in part the 
result of conditions peculiar to the ministry as a profession. 

With the vast throngs of emigrants that have entered the 
country since 1870 have come pastors and priests of many 
tongues ; and on account of the increasing scarcity of theologians 
and preachers of the first class trained in American schools, 
stronger churches and theological chairs have increasingly 
sought out and brought to the United States clergymen educated 
in other English-speaking countries. Of the 108,265 male 
clergymen listed in the census of 1900, 84,760, or 78.3 per cent., 

^ Bureau of Census, Special Reports : Supplementary Analysis and Derivative 
Tables, Twelfth Census. Washington, 1906. 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY $1 

were recorded as "native born;" 23,505, or 21.7 per cent., were 
reported as born outside the United States; the percentage of 
clergymen of foreign birth in 1890 (21. i per cent.) was not 
much smaller than that in 1900. In 1900, 11.2 per cent, of our 
physicians and surgeons, 6.3 per cent, of our lawyers, and 8.4 
per cent, of our teachers, were of foreign birth, a fact which 
may be interpreted as indicating that 5 to 7 per cent, of our 
doctors, lawyers, and teachers were born in foreign countries but 
educated in the United States, the rest of those reported as 
foreign born being also educated in foreign countries. We are 
probably safe in assuming that one-half or two-thirds of the 
23,505 clergymen of foreign birth recorded in 1900 were edu- 
cated outside the United States, coming to this country after 
the completion of their professional study. 

Again, it is understood that in some parts of the country, 
particularly the South, many have been licensed to preach with- 
out having pursued a course in a theological school. It is, how- 
ever, difficult to secure statistics in regard to this practice, or to 
judge in what degree the total is affected by accessions to the 
ranks of the clergy from this source. 

Finally, the census enrolment of clergymen differs in an 
important particular from that of members of other professions. 
When graduates of law or medical schools turn aside from 
their profession to enter other fields of work they ordinarily 
drop their titles and are afterward not enumerated as lawyers 
and doctors. If, however, men have once taken orders, they 
generally keep up their ecclesiastical relations and continue their 
life long to be recorded as ministers; though for a period of 
years they may have been engaged in secular teaching, in life 
insurance, or other occupations having no direct connection with 
the sacred office, they retain the right to vote along with the 
active ministry in ecclesiastical assemblies, in which they form a 
strongly conservative element. A comparison with the statistics 
of enrolment in the medical profession is in this respect instruct- 
ive. In 1880 there were 11,929 students of medicine, enrolled 
in 90 schools; in 1890, 15,484 students in 129 schools; in 1900 
the number had risen to 25,213, enrolled in 151 schools. In the 



32 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

twenty years the number of students of medicine more than 
doubled, but the increase in the number of men set down as 
physicians and surgeons in the first period was below the increase 
of population, in the second period only slightly in advance of it. 
The census records the number of physicians and surgeons in 
1880 as 85,671, and in 1890 as 104,805, an increase of 22.3 per 
cent., while the increase of population was 24.85 per cent. ; in 
1900 the number was 132,002, an increase of 25.9 per cent, in 
the decade, the increase of population being 20.68 per cent. In 
1880 there was a physician or surgeon to every 585 persons in 
the country; in 1900 the ratio was somewhat higher, one to every 
576. How many are enumerated in the census as clergymen who 
cannot properly be considered of the ministry, either active or 
retired, it is not possible to estimate ; but it is plain that all errors 
of classification on the part of census enumerators reckoning 
those as clergymen who once were clergymen but were such no 
longer except in name, would go to swell the total enrolment in 
the profession and would so far vitiate the correctness of the 
figures. 

If the death rate computed in the Twelfth Census for "the 
professional class" (15.3 per 1,000) held true in the case of 
clergymen, the loss by death in 1900 among the 111,638 clergy- 
men should have been about 1,700, and this loss should have been 
offset by the influx, into the profession, of the 1,773 graduates 
from theological schools recorded in that year — not to speak of 
other sources of supply. But the death rate among clergymen 
in the "registration states" in 1900 reached the surprising ratio 
of 23.5 per 1,000, a rate of mortality higher even than that 
among physicians and surgeons (19.9 per 1,000).^ It is not 
certain that this high death rate would hold true of the clergy- 
men of the United States as a whole; but if it could be proved 
to be valid for the larger area,^ the fact would imply that the 
average age among clergym.en had increased considerably above 

^ Twelfth Census of the United States^ 1900, Vol. Ill, pp. cclxiii-cclxv. 

*At the rate of 23.5 per 1,000 the loss of clergymen by death in the 
United States in 1900 would have exceeded 2,600. The death rate computed 
for clergymen in 1890 was much lower, only 18.2 per 1,000. 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 33 

normal because not enough young men had of late been entering 
the profession to keep the average age and death rate down; 
and under such conditions, again, a dearth of clergymen trained 
for their work in the United States might be anticipated, so soon 
as the number of graduates in theology in any year should fail 
to exceed somewhat * the number of clergymen removed in that 
year by death. Though our data, for reasons already obvious, 
warrant no sweeping conclusions, it seems probable that this 
situation, in which the Protestant churches may expect to find 
themselves confronted by a dearth of young ministers of domestic 
training, is already near at hand. Of the clergymen in "regis- 
tration states" regarding whom data were collected in 1900 
(23,485, about one-fifth of the clergymen in the country), more 
than 45 per cent, were above the age of 45 years; but of the 
lawyers less than 40 per cent., and of the physicians and sur- 
geons less than 37 per cent., were more than 45 years old. The 
number of graduates from all the theological schools of the 
United States in 1906 was only 1,551. 

We see, then, that the determination of the significance of 
the figures which have been cited is no simple matter. Statistics 
in any case are only a partial or approximate expression of con- 
ditions; and the relation of the rate of increase in the census of 
the professions to the enrolment of students in professional 
schools involves the weighing of many considerations which 
cannot be taken into account at this time. No interpretation of 
such data is trustworthy, however, which does not view them in 
relation to the general educational movement of our country 
in the past thirty years, a movement which, in point of numbers 
affected, is without a parallel in the history of education. In 
1889-90 the number of students enrolled in the universities and 
colleges of the country, including the separate colleges for women 
that were such in fact as well as in name, and in schools of 
technology, was reported as 55,687; in 1905-6, only seventeen 
years later, it was 135,834 (97,738 men, 38,096 women), an 
increase of nearly 144 per cent. In the same period the enrol- 

* There must be a surplus to recruit the ranks of missionaries, who, expatri- 
ated, are not reckoned in the census of the United States, 



34 



THE SCHOOL REVIEW 



ment in secondary schools, public and private, ran from 297,894 
to the almost incredible figure 824,447, an increase of 177 per 
cent. If to this we add the enrolment of secondary students in 
public and private normal schools, universities and colleges, 
colleges for women, and manual training schools, we have the 
total of 924,399 students receiving secondary instruction in 1906. 

In this enormous increase of students in institutions of 
secondary and higher education schools of dentistry, pharmacy, 
and engineering have fared relatively as well as schools of law 
and medicine, or even better. The students of dentistry regis- 
tered in dental colleges in 1880 numbered 730; in 1890, 2,696; 
in 1900, 7,928. Of students of pharmacy 1,347 were reported 
in 1880, 2,871 in 1890, and 4,042 in 1900. In the thirty years 
from 1875 to 1905 the increase in attendance at schools of 
theology was 44.8 per cent. (5,234 in 1875, 7,580 in 1905) ; at 
schools of law, 450 per cent. (2,677 in 1875, ^4,7^4 in 1905) ; 
at schools of medicine, 201 per cent. (8,580 in 1875, 25,835 in 
1905) ; at schools of dentistry, 1,424 per cent. (469 in 1875, 
7,149 in 1905, the number in 1905 being somewhat smaller than 
in 1900) ; and at schools of pharmacy, 436 per cent. (922 in 
1875, 4,944 in 1905). The enrolment of students in schools of 
technology increased from 7,577 in 1889-90 to 16,110 in 
1905-6, or 112 per cent, in seventeen years. 

It would be natural to assume that this increase in the enrol- 
ment of students of applied science and of law was due in large 
measure to the multiplication of technical schools since 1875, 
and to the raising of professional standards which drove out of 
fashion the time-honored method of preparing for a professional 
career by office study. Schools of law numbered 43 in 1875, 
96 in 1905; schools of medicine, 80 in 1875, ^4^ in 1905; 
schools of dentistry, 12 in 1875, 54 in 1905; and schools of 
pharmacy, 14 in 1875, 6y in 1905. The increase in the number 
of schools of theology has been less marked; the number was 
123 in 1875, 156 in 1905. But the schools of theology, never- 
theless, in 1905 outnumbered the schools of law by 60, the 
schools of medicine by 8, and were 35 more than the combined 
number of schools of dentistry and of pharmacy. The multipli- 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 35 

cation and wide distribution of professional schools has undoubt- 
edly had a stimulating effect upon the enrolment of students; 
yet they were called into existence in response to a social need, 
and they would not have had so many students if the time had 
not been ripe for their establishment. Such influence as they 
have exerted in stimulating the enrolment of students has been 
in part offset by the increasing difficulty and stricter enforce- 
ment of the requirements for admission and graduation. We 
are forced to the conclusion that though the census has up to 
the present time furnished no indication of a serious diminution 
in the supply of clergymen, the attendance at schools of theology 
shows a falling off out of all proportion to the increase in 
attendance at other professional schools. 

The rush of students into institutions of secondary and 
higher education in recent years is a concomitant of the increas- 
ing concentration of our population in cities and towns, which 
in turn is consequent upon the enormous and unanticipated 
development of our industries and commerce. "Adopting for 
convenience the standard of 'urban population' employed in the 
last census, we note that in 1880 in the United States the per- 
sons living in places with a population of 4,000 or more repre- 
sented 25.8 per cent, of the total population; in 1890, 33.1 per 
cent., and in 1900, 37.6^ per cent. This urban population was 
not evenly distributed, but massed in certain geographical 
divisions. In the north Atlantic states in 1900, 64.7 per cent. 
of the population were living in incorporated places and towns 
containing upward of 4,000 inhabitants, as against 57.9 per 
cent, in 1890 and 48 per cent, in 1880; in the north central 
states, the percentage in 1900 was 35.5 and in the western states 
35.9 per cent., as against 30.1 and 33.4 per cent, respectively in 
1890 and 21. 1 and 27.5 per cent, in 1880. In the south central 
states the urban population in 1900 formed only about one- 
eighth of the whole (13.5 per cent.), in the south Atlantic states 
less than one-fifth (19.6)." ^ The extraordinary increase in the 

"Hawaii, the Indian reservations, and Indian Territory are excluded from 
consideration in this comparative view, because they were not reckoned in the 
percentage of 1880. 

^Educational Review, Vol. XXXII (1906), p. 468. 



36 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

number and size of cities and towns has caused the rapid multi- 
pHcation of pubhc high schools, which in 1889-90 numbered 
2,526, with 9,120 teachers and 202,963 pupils; in 1905-6 there 
were 8,031 public high schools, with 30,844 teachers and 722,- 
692 students J 

Urban life in general is more stimulating to the desire of 
advanced education and the choice of a professional career than 
rural life; and the growth of public high schools has established 
a line of least resistance leading to higher institutions. There 
are some indications that we are on the eve of a reaction, not 
for sentimental but for economic reasons, toward farm life, and 
that in the next few decades the concentration of population in 
cities and towns will proceed less rapidly, in proportion to the 
increase of our rural population, than in the past quarter- 
century. Be that as it may, a survey of present conditions 
reveals no obvious reason why the ministry should not rank, if 
not with engineering, at least with law and medicine in the 
preference of students choosing a profession, especially since 
the changes in the distribution of population have not been 
accompanied by a decline in the activity or influence of the 
religious denominations as a whole. 

But the ministry is not the only calling which at the present 
time is confronted with a shortage of men, imminent or actual. 
The number of men and women engaged in the work of teach- 
ing is vastly greater, greater in fact than the combined number 
of clergymen, physicians and surgeons, lawyers, dentists, and 
engineers.^ The increase in the number of teachers has not 
only kept pace with the growth of population, but has far sur- 
passed it. In 1870 there were 73 teachers to each 10,000 per- 
sons of school age (5 to 24 years) ; in 1880, 102; in i8qo, 127; 
and in 1900, 140. But the proportion of male teachers has 
steadily declined. It was a trifle more than one-third of the 

■^ The enrolment in the pubic high schools in 1905-6 in the north Atlantic 
states was 236,500 ; in the north central states, 335,538 ; in the western states, 
57.738; in the south central states, 54,925; in the south Atlantic states, 37,991. 

'These were 431,004, in 1900, made up as follows; clergymen, 111,638; phy- 
sicians and surgeons, 132,002; lawyers, 114,460; dentists, 29,665; engineers, 43,239. 
The number of teachers in 1900 was 446,133. 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 37 

whole number (33.7 per cent.) in 1870; in 1900 it was just 
above one-fourth (26.6) in the continental United States, if 
teachers of all races are reckoned together. The percentage 
of male teachers was somewhat higher among the negroes and 
Indians; of the 424,422 white teachers recorded in that year, 
only 26.1 per cent, were men. In 1905-6, according to the 
report of the commissioner of education, less than 24 per cent. 
(23.6) of the 466,063 teachers in common schools were men, 
the percentage being higher in country than in city schools and 
in the southern than in the northern states ; in the north Atlantic 
states male teachers were only one in seven (14.2 per cent.). In 
the 661 cities of the United States containing over 8,000 inhabit- 
ants, the ratio in 1906 was very nearly one male to twelve 
female teachers. In these same cities in the public high schools 
there were 4,912 male teachers to 7,491 female teachers; in the 
other public high schools of the country the division according 
to sex was more nearly equal, the number of male teachers 
being given as 9,424, of female teachers, 9,017. 

In the decade from 1890 to 1900, while the number of teach- 
ers in the country increased nearly 28.5 per cent and the popula- 
tion increased 20.68 per cent., the increase in the niimber of male 
teachers, in all classes of schools and colleges, was only 17.02 
per cent, (from 101,278 to 118,519), a relative decline so great 
as to produce a marked effect upon the profession. That the 
loss of men to the profession of teaching has not been more 
keenly felt is due to the fact that the large increase in the num- 
ber of women graduating from secondary and higher institu- 
tions in recent years has furnished substitutes or recruits for 
almost all classes of positions. It would take us too far from 
the subject in hand to present considerations showing how 
detrimental to the interests of sound education has been the 
preponderance of female teachers in many high schools; one 
serious result is the instability of the staff of instruction due to 
the fact that many women engage in teaching without a true 
professional interest, not as a life-work but as a makeshift 
till they can become settled in a home or find other means of 
support. Had the increase in the number of male teachers kept 



38 



THE SCHOOL REVIEW 



pace with the increase in the number of teachers, the census 
enrohiient of men engaged in teaching in 1900 should have been 
about 130,000 instead of 118,519; had the rate of increase been 
only as great as that of the population, the enrolment would 
nevertheless have been above 122,000. 

But the United States does not stand alone in the decline 
either in the number of its students of theology or in the pro- 
portion of men among its teachers. In the following table the 
enrolment of professional students in the German Empire is 
shown for the university faculties of theology (Protestant and 
Catholic), law, and medicine, at different periods since 1875 : 

ENROLMENT OF STUDENTS IN CERTAIN PROFESSIONAL 
DEPARTMENTS IN GERMANY 





Theology 


Law 


Medicine 


Year 


Protestant 


Catholic 


Total 


1875-76 

1880-81 

1885-86 

1890-91 

1895-96 

1900-01 

1905-06* 


1,519 
2,384 
4,403 
4,190 
2,860 

2,437 
2,166 


710 

648 

1,068 

1,232 

1,469 

1,584 
1,680 


2,229 
3,032 
5,471 
5,422 

4,329 
4,021 

3,846 


4,537 
5,260 
4,825 
6,670 

7.655 
10,292 
12,456 


3,333 
4,179 
7,680 
8,381 
7,664 
7,815 
6,142 



♦Winter semester. The writer is indebted to the commissioner of education for data kindly fur- 
nished. 



The conditions in Germany are so unlike those of the United 
States that a detailed comparison with our conditions would 
be fruitless. It is, however, important to notice that the enrol- 
ment of students of theology, as with us, has not kept pace with 
the enrolment of students of law and medicine; and also that, 
as with us, the relative decline has been less marked in the case 
of Catholic than of Protestant students.^ 

" The situation is discussed in an article in Chronik der christlichen Welt for 
September 12, 1907, summarized by Professor H. M. Scott in the Chicago Semi- 
nary Quarterly as follows: "Thirty years ago there were 17,500 students in 
German universities, ten years ago there were 30,000, and last year there were 
45,000, of whom 41,000 were native Germans. The total number of students 
has grown nearly twice as fast as the population, and in face of this the num- 
ber of Protestant students of theology has steadily declined. It went, between 
1886 and 1905, in Prussia from 2,042 to 719, and the end is not yet. There are 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 39 

The proportion of male to female teachers varies greatly in 
different countries ; yet in all the countries for which recent statis- 
tics are available for comparison/*^ there has been a relative 
decrease in the number of male teachers. This decrease was 
from 29.6 to 26.8 per cent, in Great Britain and Ireland in twenty 
years (1881 to looi) : 72.6 to 68.5 per cent in Germany in thir- 
teen years ( 1882 to 1895) ; 54.4 to 42.4 per cent, in France in ten 
years (1886 to 1896); and 41.2 to 35.4 per cent, in Italy in 
twenty years (1881 to 1901). Here again a detailed com- 
parison would be devoid of value; but the statistics indicate an 
unmistakable tendency which seems to be common to the fore- 
most nations and which is apparently a phase of a larger read- 
justment of modern life to new economic and social conditions. 

In the United States at the present time complaints of the 
lack of trained men for Protestant pulpits are heard not more 
frequently than of the lack of men properly equipped for certain 
kinds of educational work, particularly in the secondary schools. 
Yet for any vacancy in either calling which assured a bare living 
there has been, up to the present time, no lack of applicants. 
The difficulty has been to find candidates of the right quality. 
Rash statements should be avoided; but we may well believe 
that while the relative number of first rate physicians and law- 
yers is greater than it was twenty years ago, the relative num- 
ber of first rate teachers, outside of the universities, and of first 
rate ministers, is smaller. This must continue to be the case, in 
the ministry, so long as the graduates in medicine and law are 
relatively so much more numerous than graduates in theology;^' 

only 250 ministers available for 425 places. In 1889 there were in Berlin 570 
divinity students; in 1895 there were 292; and in 1906 only 178. Between 
1870 and 1903 students of theology made no increase; the numbers were 2,155 
and 2,150! And in that period students of philology increased from 2,753 to 
5,501, and in 1906 to 8,464! The lack of candidates for the ministry is now 
between 800 and 900." 

The raising of the age of ordination for Roman Catholic clergy from 24 
(or 23) to 31 years is understood to be in contemplation, a proposal which 
implies no lack of candidates in that denomination. 

" Conveniently summarized in Supplementary Analysis and Derivative 
Tables, Twelfth Census, p. 478. 

"While the graduates in theology in 1906 numbered 1,551, graduates in 
medicine numbered 5,400, and in law, 3.289. Had the graduates in theology 



40 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

for the larger the increase in the number of men entering a pro- 
fession the greater will be the number of weaker men forced out 
by competition, and the stronger will be the average quality of 
the remainder. But there are other factors in the problem; 
surface indications are here no guide. 

In the first place, the lack of homogeneity in our cultural 
conditions directly affects those two professions which are the 
most obvious expression of the social consciousness upon the 
ideal side, teaching and the ministry. In the conflict of impulses 
seeking expression among us there is no clear note, there is a 
lack of that imperative which forces men to the pulpit or the 
teacher's desk to become interpreters and prophets for the life 
around them. How different it was in Puritan New England, 
when babes were consecrated to the ministry in the cradle ! How 
different is the attitude of society toward the profession of 
teaching, now that the control and direction of most systems 
of instruction, and the fate of most teachers, are in the hands 
of boards composed of men selected generally for other reasons 
than fitness to deal with educational problems ! 

Furthermore, in the profession of teaching outside of the 
colleges and universities there is uncertainty of tenure, with 
which is coupled insufficient remuneration. Every year men of 
marked success, with an equipment representing a large outlay 
of time, energy, and money, are forced out of the profession, and 
young men of promise are deterred from entering it, because 
they can foresee no time when the rewards of faithful and suc- 
cessful effort will be assured to them. This results in part from 
the inadequate endowment and precarious existence of most 
institutions of private support ; but the great majority of teachers 
are in institutions supported by local taxation, in which, generally 
speaking, no number of years of efficient service and no degree 
of eminence in the profession will protect a teacher against a 
persistent public official using the influence of his temporary 
position to carry out an ulterior purpose or ride a hobby or vent 

been as numerous in relation to the census of clergymen as the graduates in 
medicine were in relation to the census of physicians and surgeons, the num- 
ber would have exceeded 4,500. 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 41 

personal spite. We may grant that the majority of men in 
elective governing boards are public-spirited and have a lively 
interest in the schools which they control; can we expect that 
school administration, under present conditions, will not mani- 
fest the lack of foresight and executive continuity characteristic 
of the administration of all local affairs in our country? There 
are encouraging signs of improvement, indications that the 
American people will attack the problem of local administration 
and solve it. Meanwhile the difficulty of finding men able to fill 
the best positions increases every year. 

From the economic point of view the ministry is on a differ- 
ent footing from teaching. Because the social imperative is not 
heard for either calling, both are generally shunned by men who 
have financial resources, who make other professions or occu- 
pations their first choice. Both callings are therefore in great 
part recruited from the ranks of those who are not financially 
independent. Men who purpose to teach must gain their equip- 
ment at their own expense — scholarship and fellowship aid 
assists but a small percentage. This means that professional 
preparation is in many cases a constant struggle, with an accu- 
mulation of indebtedness at the end which the earnings of an 
ill-paid profession must be relied upon to wipe out. Under 
present conditions the most farsighted students who are 
attracted to the work of teaching become increasingly wary of 
embarking heavily loaded on an uncertain sea. But so soon as 
a young man manifests a desire to study theology, his church 
reaches out to him a helping hand. Not only does he receive 
moral encouragement, but in most denominations a less or 
greater measure of financial support through college and semi- 
nary. Theological schools have been known to pay even the 
traveling expenses of students from their homes. This subsi- 
dizing of the study of theology has given to that profession a 
distinct advantage in the recruiting of men, and has had the 
effect of making them feel secure of their future. It has also 
now and then carried through an extended and costly course of 
training, as along the line of least resistance, students who 
possessed no other quality of fitness than a kind of superficial 



42 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

goodness due to a lack of force; and it has pauperized many a 
well-meaning fellow who has gone out into the ministry with 
the perverted notion that the world owed him a living. But 
these are accidental, not necessary, results of a system that is on 
the whole probably as advantageous as it is, under present con- 
ditions, necessary. Nothing could be farther from the truth 
than the frequent assertion that men shun the ministry because 
the temper of our time is prevailingly sordid. No one can be 
found who has dealt with American youth in educational insti- 
tutions for a quarter of a century who believes that there ever 
was a time when more young men were ready to give themselves 
to an altruistic motive, to consecrate themselves with whole- 
hearted devotion to a worthy cause, than now. Are we not, 
at heart, a nation of idealists? How otherwise is one to account 
for the attitude of our whole people toward the Spanish War 
and the problem of Cuban independence? And among our 
young people there is no lack of interest in religious matters; 
how otherwise would it be possible to account for the extension 
of the work of the Christian associations for men and for 
women, and the rapid rise of church organizations for young 
people which have as their purpose the development of youth 
on the side of religious experience and expression? 

The chief cause of the decline in the number of our students 
of theology lies in the lack of adjustment between religious 
and secular education. One phase of this estrangement, the 
isolation of theological schools and its unfortunate consequences 
both for the study of theology and for the universities, I have 
discussed elsewhere.^^ To how great an extent education in the 
stages below the college and university has become secularized, 
is not generally understood, on account of the rapidity with 
which the process of secularization has gone on. Though the 
choice of a career is in most cases not definitely fixed while the 
student is in the secondary school, his field of choice is so 

^^ "The State Universities and the Churches," Proceedings of the Conference 
on Religious Education, University of Illinois Bulletin, Vol. Ill (1906), No. 8, 
Pt. 2 ; "The Problem of Religious Instruction in the State Universities," Pro- 
ceedings of the Religious Education Association (1908) ; "The State Universities 
and Theology," The Outlook, Vol. XC (1908), pp. 27-29. 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 43 

restricted by his selection of studies in this period as to confine 
him, in respect to facihty of professonal preparation, within 
narrow hmits. This is particularly the case with theology, for 
the advantageous pursuit of which the student must have a pre- 
vious knowledge of Greek. 

The academy of the olden time, the preparatory department 
of the denominational college, and the college course in vogue 
to the late eighties and early nineties, led directly and easily to 
the study of theology; Greek, Latin, mathematics, and moral 
philosophy in some form were staples of instruction, with a 
certain amount of prescribed work in the modern languages, 
English, history, and the natural sciences. Now — how great is 
the change! 

In 1890 nearly one-third of all our students in secondary 
schools still were in academies and private high schools; in 1906, 
only one student in eight (12.34 per cent.). Furthermore, of 
the 101,755 students reported in secondary institutions of pri- 
vate support in 1906, 45,609 were in non-sectarian schools; only 
56,146 were reported in denominational schools, distributed as 
follows : 



Denomination 



Roman Catholic 

Baptist 

Methodist 

Episcopal 

Presbyterian 

Methodist Episcopal South. 

Friends 

Congregational 

Lutheran 

Other denominations 



Total. 



Schools 



382 

63 
64 
81 

55 
23 
43 
40 
26 
54 



831 



Instructors 



2,140 
382 

431 
738 
268 
142 
280 
205 
137 
504 



S>227 



Students 



19,949 
5,776 
6,353 
5,391 
2,907 
2,179 

2,737 
2,611 
1,789 
6,454 



56,146 



Of this number about 27,000 were boys. In the same year 
35,951 boys of secondary rank were reported in "private uni- 
versities and colleges," of which a considerable proportion were 
under denominational control. While exact figures are not 
obtainable, it is easy to see how small a number of boys of 
secondary rank (50,000 would be a fair guess) in comparison 
with the whole number of boys pursuing secondary studies 



44 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

(415,038) were in the classes of institutions in which the claims 
of the ministry may be presumed to have been kept before them, 
and in which the course is so laid out as to lead easily to the 
study of theology. 

In 1905-6 students of Greek were reported in only 731 out 
of 8,031 public high schools; that is, in nine-tenths of our public 
hie-h schools there was no Greek at all. The number of stu- 
dents of Greek among the 722,692 students in public high schools 
was 8,886, of whom only 4,510 were boys. In the private 
secondary schools at the same time 6,355 students were taking 
Greek, of whom 5,184 were boys; possibly nearly as many more 
were enrolled in Greek classes in college preparatory departments. 
" On the most favorable showing we can hardly suppose that more 
than thirteen or fourteen thousand boys of secondary rank are 
studying Greek in the United States at the present time. In 
1898-99 the students of Greek in public high schools alone num- 
bered 14,858. The number has been so reduced because the 
whole trend of the high school as "the people's college" has 
been against subjects requested by few students, and of late in 
the direction of so great freedom of choice as to put a handicap 
on subjects known to be difficult. Had the enrolment of students 
of Greek in the public high schools since 1890 kept pace with the 
enrolment of students of Latin in the same schools the number 
would have exceeded 20,000 in 1898-99, and 30,000 in 1905-6; 
and 30,000 students divided up among 8,000 high schools would 
make an average of less than four to each school. 

In 1905-6 more than 35 per cent, of the graduates 
of public high schools had so shaped their courses of study as 
to be able to enter college ; and as we have seen, of the schools 
from which these were graduated less than one in ten had Greek. 
We may suppose that at the present time seven students out of 
eight in secondary schools are in public high schools. The per- 
centage of those who make the high-school course preparatory 
to college increases every year.^^ Recruits for theology should 

'^ The percentages of high-school graduates prepared for college are as fol- 
lows for seven years: 30.28 in 1900, 31.27 in 1901, 31.72 in 1902, 32.70 in 1903, 
34.18 in 1904, 35-55 in 190S, 35-59 in 1906. 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 45 

come chiefly from the colleges and the literary departments of 
the universities. The best men of college rank who are attracted 
to the ministry and have not had Greek in the preparatory 
school, having looked over the course of special training lead- 
ing to the profession, generally conclude that they cannot meet 
the requirements of preparation in a reasonable time, and turn 
aside to other work. The secularizing of American education 
has put a greater handicap on preparation for theology than 
upon that for any other calling. To secure recruits of the right 
quality and sufficient number from the ranks of college men 
who have not had Greek is manifestly impracticable; and this 
aspect of the problem is complicated still further by the enrol- 
ment of so large a proportion of the college students of the 
country in state institutions. 

On the part of theological seminaries there has lately been 
manifested a tendency to meet the situation by relaxing the 
requirements in Greek, if not also in Hebrew, for their students. 
With how great danger this alternative is fraught, not alone for 
the future of theological study but for the influence of the 
ministry, has been made clear by the papers already presented 
in this discussion. And it is no less impracticable to think of 
restoring the conditions of study prevalent in the last century, 
and of offsetting by competition of private institutions the trend 
of the public high school away from the studies leading to 
theology. The only adequate remedy is that suggested by the 
situation. Greek must be restored to our secondary schools; 
then the number of young men having Greek will be large 
enough to furnish a full quota to theological study. It is not 
necessary that a decision to study theology be reached in the 
period of secondary study. Let Greek be offered in our public 
schools by suitable teachers under such conditions that the pur- 
suit of it will not be a handicap in completing a course for 
graduation, and enough students will take it to make a college 
constituency from which abundant recruits for theology can be 
chosen. 

The justification of the support of secondary as of other 
schools by taxation lies in the service that will be rendered to 



46 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

society by those who have received the benefits which they con- 
fer. If our secularized education fails to provide society with 
adequate leadership on the religious side, does not the remedy 
lie with the taxpayers? Do we not need a ministry, educated 
in the best sense of the word, as much as we need trained 
lawyers, physicians, and engineers ? Surely no one would main- 
tain that the moral and religious interests are less to be safe- 
guarded than the material interests of society; else why is it 
agreed among reasonable men that church property should be 
exempt from taxation? 

If the situation is once understood, it will be righted. Teach- 
ers and school administrators as a class are religious men, and 
American communities are at heart not indifferent to the claims 
of religion. Let us suppose that in a given city the clergy and 
the teachers should unite in requesting that provision be made 
for Greek in the high school, even if the number pursuing the 
study should be below that fixed for the forming of classes in 
"practical" subjects; can we believe that the average board of 
education would resist the appeal? 

The amount of Greek that candidates for theology acquire 
after entering college or the theological school can never be 
made adequate without the sacrifice of other work of funda- 
mental importance. The service which our institutions of 
secondary and collegiate education are rendering in return for 
their support will not be complete until there is such a readjust- 
ment as shall put the study of theology on as favorable a foot- 
ing as other professional study. The first step in such a 
readjustment must be the introduction of the study of Greek more 
generally into the public high schools, a step which does not lack 
justification also on other grounds. 



CLASSICAL STUDIES AS A PREPARATION FOR THEOLOGY 47 



V. CONCLUDING REMARKS 



PRESIDENT JAMES B. ANGELL, Chairman 
University of Michigan 



We are under much obligation to our friends in the theological 
field who have favored us on this occasion with so clear and con- 
vincing statements in regard to the character of the studies which 
school and college should provide in preparation for the study 
of theology. 

The collection of statistics presented by Professor Kelsey 
seems to me of much value. I have myself been inclined to 
attribute the decline in the number of candidates for the ministry 
primarily to the transition which our theology and our biblical 
criticism are now going through. Many a student who means to 
live a religious life is not sufficiently settled in his views of certain 
questions to dogmatize upon them as a preacher might be expected 
to do. 

I think, nevertheless, that there is groimd for the thesis that 
the lack of training in Greek in so many schools prevents some 
men from inclining to study theology. I wish I felt more certain 
that the knowledge of that fact will lead school boards and private 
schools to reinstate instruction in Greek where it has been 
dropped. 

I am hoping that when our churches have passed through the 
period of transition and have become fairly settled on some 
common ground, young men will not in so many cases as now 
hesitate about becoming preachers and pastors. They will then 
demand instruction in Greek as a matter of course. Meanwhile 
I hope that the suggestions in the paper may bear fruit. 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



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